"I'm not afraid. I've got my rifle. Besides, I'll be at Murray's before dark, and there, as you know, I shall be in good hands. But Claire will worry unless she knows where I am."

"She'll worry just the same."

"No. She knows Mrs. Murray very well."

"But----"

"Good-by, Mr. Smythe!"

She reached her hand to him, and he took it reluctantly.

"It's all wrong, Miss g.a.y.l.o.r.d!" he protested. "I'm convinced that I'm acting like a fool. If anything happens to you, I'll----"

"Nothing will happen to me. Good-by!"

Smythe watched her until she was swallowed up by the woods; he looked at the pines piling up to the distant crests of the mountains, ma.s.s on ma.s.s, and solitude enfolding deeper solitude; he listened to the long, low, rolling murmur of the forest, sweet but menacing. Then, with the inward comment that he was several kinds of a blithering idiot, he turned and rode back toward the Park, evolving various interesting but futile theories to explain the fact that he, a man of undoubted intelligence, had always acted the part of the giddy fool in moments of emergency. And there was Huntington--another fool! He could foresee a pretty dialogue between them.

CHAPTER XX

"THE TRAIL HELD TRUE"

The forest enveloped her, but she sheltered herself in its heart, and was glad of its soothing silence. The wind had died down to a rustling murmur in the highest foliage; through rifts in the dark-green canopy she caught glimpses of a cool blue sky; and there was a rooty sweetness in the air.

Mile by mile the road, a mere track traveled by Murray's team at long intervals, grew rougher and more difficult. Soon it had abandoned the easy grades for the gulch, and climbed steep mountain sides, in a devious course through heavy timber, dropping to tumbling rivulets, climbing again to hang on the edges of high cliffs, dodging here and there among ma.s.sive, outjutting rocks. Four hours she rode thus, mounting, ever mounting, with glimpses now and then of the forests ma.s.sed green-black below, and glimpses even of the Park itself, around the shoulder of a hill,--a patch of green and violet bright with sunshine. And then, when weariness had begun to weigh upon her, and as the shadows of the forest turned to glooms, she saw with a thrill of expectation that the road dipped ahead of her into a little gulch that lay hidden away in a cleft of the mountains. She must surely be near her destination now; and sure enough, she was riding presently along the bank of a roaring stream; beyond her was a small meadow of a brilliant green, and at the far edge of it a log cabin, with friendly smoke curling from the chimney.

But she was surprised and disappointed. She had expected, on reaching Murray's, to see the stark head of Thunder Mountain towering above it, near and sheer. It was nowhere visible; not even the silvery peaks, its neighbors, were to be seen; there were only forests heaped on forests to the sky line. The trail, then, must be longer than she thought; and she seemed to be no closer to him than when she had studied the bald head of the mountain through the clouds.

She was welcomed by Mrs. Murray with cordiality, but in some surprise.

A stout and jovial person, whose spirits appeared not to have been lowered in the least degree by the loneliness of her surroundings, Mrs. Murray was a helpful hostess to Marion, who was now in a state of deep dejection. A little boy and his smaller sister, both very dirty but rugged and red-cheeked, played in the open s.p.a.ce before the cabin.

The week's washing was on the line, and from behind it, at the sound of a horse's hoof beats, came Mrs. Murray, staring in amazement.

Wonders on wonders in that solitude, where nothing ever happened!

First a runaway horse of unheard-of color, saddled and bridled, dashing past the cabin, and almost trampling the children at their play; then Philip Haig, with his set face and burning eyes, making inquiries, and asking for a bite to eat; and then----

"Well! If it ain't Miss g.a.y.l.o.r.d!" cried Mrs. Murray, as she rushed to greet her. "What in the world----"

She paused on that, recalling suddenly what she had heard at Thompson's of Marion's nursing Haig back to life, and intuitively a.s.sociating her appearance there with his. Marion saw the thought reflected in the woman's honest face, and knew that after all the happenings of the summer, and the gossip that had followed, her better course was to be frank with Mrs. Murray from the start. Besides she could not wait to ask her questions by any indirection.

"Have you seen him?" she demanded eagerly.

"Yes, he was here--about noontime. The look on his face!"

She threw up her hands in a gesture that indicated the abandonment of all hope for such a man.

"And Sunnysides?"

"Long before him. The critter almost run over my two babies, playin'

there before the door. Poor dears, scared almost out o' their skins!"

"What did he say?"

"Nothin'. That is, not much. About the horse first. My man told him it ain't no use tryin' to ketch him, an' it's foolish to try to cross Thunder Mountain. Murray's been here ten years, an' ain't gone much further'n the edge of it. Storms allus drove him back. An' what's the use, when he's got wife an' childer to look after? Of course Haig----"

"What did he say then?"

"He says he c'n cross if Sunnysides can, an' if they can't they'll fight it out up there. My man asks why he didn't go 'round a safe way an' wait for Sunnysides in the San Luis, if he thinks the horse's goin' back home. Haig says he'd made up his mind to cross Thunder Mountain some time, an' now's as good a time as any. But it's----" She was checked at last by the look of anguish on Marion's face. "But you just come in. It's supper time, almost, an' you must be right hungry.

Murray'll be here soon, an' he'll put up your horse."

In the cabin there was to be seen at first just one big room, with two beds at one end, a table surrounded by chairs in the middle, and a stove in the midst of kettles and pans and tubs at the other. But presently Marion noticed a kind of balcony above the beds, and she learned later that this was the "spare bedroom" in which she would be stowed away for the night.

"He was hungry too," Mrs. Murray went on, being careful, however, to confine herself to the material side of the subject. "He ate some dinner, an' then, after we give up tryin' to stop him, Murray said he'd got to take somethin' with him to eat, an' some blankets. He hadn't a thing, mind you, an' didn't want to take nothin', but he did take a good-sized strip o' bacon and some bread--I'd just did the bakin'--an' a fryin'-pan an' matches an' a knife. Murray done 'em up in a pair o' blankets, an' stuck in a leather coat with sheepskin inside, an' hung a hatchet on his saddle. He'll need 'em--if he gits across into the Black Lake country, which's worse some ways than Thunder Mountain--forest't ain't never been touched, an' bad lands, an'----"

Murray's entrance interrupted this speech, which was becoming painful to her guest, in spite of the good woman's resolution to say nothing discouraging. Murray, a bearded, rough fellow in whose face shone good nature and contentment with the living he made out of his cows and chickens and few head of stock feeding in the mountain meadows, received a whispered hint, and obediently talked of other things than Haig and the runaway. They supped on bacon and eggs, with bread and b.u.t.ter and milk; and an hour afterwards Marion was tucked away in a comfortable bed in that queer "spare bedroom" up against the eaves of the log cabin.

Exhaustion soon brought her sleep. But in the middle of the night she was awakened by a storm that swept high over the ranch house, scarcely touching it in its sheltered hollow, but shrieking and wailing among the rocks and pines. She sat up in her bed to listen! Thunder Mountain! Before her eyes there rose, out of the dark of the cabin, a vision of Philip p.r.o.ne among the rocks of that terrible summit, struck down by the wind, or felled by a thunderbolt, drenched with rain, and perishing of cold. There came, above the howling of the wind, a deafening crash of thunder that rolled away in sullen bellowing. She buried her face among the pillows to shut out the frightful sound; and at length, when the tumult had died away to recur no more, she lay weeping softly until sleep came again to her relief. She did not wake again till morning.

"How much farther up can I go?" asked Marion at breakfast.

"You don't mean----" began Mrs. Murray in alarm.

"No," replied Marion quickly. "I don't mean the top. But can't I ride near enough to see it?"

"You c'n go to timber line safe enough," said Murray.

"Yes, I've been that far, but you mustn't think o' goin' further,"

added the woman, still suspicious. "I'll tell you what! Murray'll go with you."

"By no means!" Marion protested. "It isn't necessary at all. I can follow trails well enough."

"I wish you'd let Murray go with you. He'll be glad to show you----"

"No. Thank you just the same, Mrs. Murray, but----"

"And you'll not try to go past timber line?"

"Don't worry about that, please! I know I could never go where men have failed. I've heard all about Thunder Mountain, and I just want to see it, near. Besides----"

She did not finish, but turned quickly away. This sign of emotion was not hidden from Mrs. Murray, and it heightened her anxiety. Lord only knew what the girl'd try to do once she got out of their sight! But where the intellectual and argumentative Smythe had failed, what could be expected of these simple mountain folk, who for all their st.u.r.dy independence were not a little awed by the superior poise and distinction of their visitor? Moreover, Marion was at this moment entirely honest in her a.s.surance that she intended to go no farther than timber line. If the idea that lay deep in the back of her mind had grown since its inception some hours before, it was yet formless and unrecognized; if her purpose now had her firmly gripped, she was as yet unconscious of it, obeying it subconsciously, while she told herself, as she told Mrs. Murray, that she wanted only to satisfy her aching heart by doing merely all that a girl could do. To make sure that Philip had not already failed--that he had not been thrown back from the very edge of the fatal crest--that he did not now lie somewhere on the last steep slope above timber line, where she might see and save him: this was the utmost of her design in setting out that morning against the protests of her hosts.

Yielding at last, where she could avail no more, the ranchwife fixed up a simple luncheon of bread and b.u.t.ter and jam, which she tied in a little package at Marion's saddlebow. And then, with a final word of warning that she must stop at timber line, an' be back at the house 'fore dark, or she, Mrs. Murray, would be wild, and he, Murray, would have to go searching for her, the good woman let her go, and waved a fat farewell to her until Marion was out of sight among the trees.

Once more the forest enfolded her. Though the wagon road ended at Murray's, the trail was still for some distance plainly marked, and offered few difficulties. Even when it began to be less distinct she was not alarmed. Smythe had told her, and Murray had confirmed his description, that Thunder Mountain was not formidable as far as the foot of the final scarp. Seth had taught her something of the lore of trails, and she was confident that she would be able to find her way even if the underfoot marks should fail. There would be blazes on trees, and broken limbs and twigs, and many subtle signs that she now sought to marshal in her mind against a possible perplexity. With eyes alert, she rode slowly and resolutely on, ever higher and higher, hour after hour, most of the time through dense woods, but now and then across a rocky slope, or down into a shallow gulch, and out again. By imperceptible degrees the trail grew fainter; and once it failed her utterly, in a small open s.p.a.ce in the woods.

For a moment she was on the very point of panic; the forest seemed to be closing in on her with sudden malignity; and the terror of Thunder Mountain held her in its cold grip. But desperation called up her courage. She walked Tuesday in an ever-widening circle around the spot where she had lost the trail, with her heart almost still, and her eyes straining at every tree as it came within her vision. Where?

Where? Would there be no more blazes, no more broken limbs, no more prints of hoofs on the mossy earth? Had she left the trail farther back than she had thought? And would she wander over all the vast bosom of the mountain until she fell from the saddle, and knew no more?